Nixie Tube Watch

The watch uses two Z5900M Nixie Tubes to display the time. It swaps between Hours and Minutes once a second and uses two small blue neon gas tubes to indicate if the time is displaying Hours or Minutes. These tubes are supplied by a 200V flyback converter.

In the current completed hardware the time is set by a rotary encoder with a built in button. The button cycles it through display states: Display On, Set Hours, Set Minutes, and Display Off. Rotating the encoder sets the hours and minutes if it is in the correct display state, otherwise it does nothing. The hardware has a IMU built in so that it can be woken up by a shake of the wrist. The watch will time out of any mode and enter a sleep state after 10 seconds to conserve power.

The current hardware in prototype has replaced the rotary encoder with an IMU containing a magnetometer. Using two magnets embedded in the case the firmware will set the time using where the IMU thinks north is by rotating the magnets in the case. This eliminates the need for any mechanical assembly for connecting the encoder to the case.